


In the middle of the night

by livesybaby



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Emo af, M/M, Robert should seriously take a nap, i think I should probably stop typing and go to sleep, what even is this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-02 22:25:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13327644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livesybaby/pseuds/livesybaby
Summary: Ramblings of Robert not being able to sleep.Typed on my phone again, excuse mistakes.This is depressing af sorry





	In the middle of the night

It's early in the morning when it usually happens, Aaron's been flat out for hours and after being caught texting under the covers and having her phone confiscated until morning Liv has given up and retired for the night, they have a mutual agreement not to tell Aaron why she's so tired on school mornings in return for her not worrying Aaron over Robert not sleeping again. 

It's peaceful at first; the whole house silent - you could hear a pin drop if you listened hard enough and apart from the soft whirring of the central heating beneath the walls it's a complete vacuum. Robert likes it that way, for a while at least. It gives him chance to collect his thoughts, go over what happened during the day and make mental notes for whatever he's got planned tomorrow. After that it's a good time to fall asleep, his head clear of worry and relaxed enough for dreams but it doesn't usually go that way. 

After the comfortable silence comes the overthinking; had Aaron really liked the shirt he wore that day or was he just saying it to please him? Robert thinks that actually Aaron found it hideous and maybe quite possibly thinks Robert himself is hideous too, he's just too nice to say and now they're married he doesn't really have a way out. Robert also thinks that maybe he's put on a few pounds over Christmas, maybe when Aaron was too tired for sex the other day after that long road trip down to Birmingham it was really because he doesn't like sleeping with Robert anymore. Maybe he's losing his touch. Maybe it's the bullet wound that still plasters his once flawless chest. Maybe all of this is in his head and he should get some sleep. 

By two o clock the extreme thinking sets in, he's wondering what his dad would have thought of him setting up home with a bloke. Throwing everything away with His posh bird because he fell in love with a Dingle, of all people. Robert thinks of his Mum, how she'd have loved Aaron. She'd had baked him one of her Victoria sponge cakes and got out all of Roberts embarrassing baby photos, she'd have told him about that one time where Robert wore a Stetson for a whole month because that's what Indiana Jones did and Robert was all set to leave the village and go on an adventure with Harrison Ford himself. 

He thinks about the good times and tries so hard to cling to them but by three the negativity sets in and he's tried to count how many times his dad told him he loved him and he can't pinpoint one. He counts the I-love-you's he heard Andy receive but he loses count at eighty-three. 

He replays all the mistakes he's ever made over and over in his head. He pictures Miss Strickland on the side of the road. He thinks of Katie laying in the hay with a broken neck. He remembers Paddy's face when he threatened little Leo. He remembers aiming a gun at Aaron's broken body and pulling the trigger by mistake. 

He thinks of Aaron, how much he's been through from Gordon to Jackson to everything Robert did and still does. He thinks of how strong he's been to survive all of that, he thinks of how wrong it feels to be unhappy when Aaron's had it much worse and he's still fighting. 

He thinks of how little fight he has left in himself. 

It's coming up to 5am and he's numb, his eyelids are heavy and so is his heart. He's got to wake up Liv in a couple of hours, plaster on a happy face while he makes her jam on toast and sends her off to school. Aaron will go to the scrapyard and Robert will follow him an hour later to check on the books. He'll survive on probably forty five minutes sleep and wish that he could inject twelve Americano's directly into his bloodstream, he needs all the caffeine he can get. 

He lays down at nearly quarter to six, buries his head into his husbands chest and flings his arm around his waist. It takes seconds for Aaron's arms to wrap around him on instinct and by the time he wakes up he'll think Robert has laid there with him all night. 

Robert will wake up and fake a smile, you can't keep everyone else strong if you're broken inside.


End file.
